XP Home: more than 256kRAM a waste?

[Mike Smith]

Quick question: I was going to upgrade my RAM from 512k to
1gb on my XP Home machine and a friend claims that
anything more than 256kRAM is a waste because XP Home can
only use 256kRAM. He says I'll have to upgrade to XP Pro
to use any more RAM. Is that true?

Thanks...

[LVTravel]

It is not true. All flavors of XP can address up to 4 GB of RAM. The only
"waste would occur if you were not running multiple programs or large
programs which would need the addtional RAM. All of my computers, except
this laptop (256 MB) have at least 768 MB RAM and the one I use the most for
video editing now has 1 GB.


"Mike Smith" > wrote in message
...
> Quick question: I was going to upgrade my RAM from 512k to
> 1gb on my XP Home machine and a friend claims that
> anything more than 256kRAM is a waste because XP Home can
> only use 256kRAM. He says I'll have to upgrade to XP Pro
> to use any more RAM. Is that true?
>
> Thanks...

[Mike Smith]

>>>All flavors of XP can address up to 4 GB of RAM. The
only "waste would occur if you were not running multiple
programs or large programs which would need the addtional
RAM.

Thank you. That is interesting.

Is there a limit on the max RAM that XP Home will allocate
for a single program? That is, if I only have one program
open, will XP Home only use a certain amout of RAM, or
would it use all of it if I had, say, 1gb?

Follow-up question: Is there any advantages to upgrading
to XP Pro if I had 1gb RAM?

[David Jones]

>Thank you. That is interesting.
>
>Is there a limit on the max RAM that XP Home will
allocate
>for a single program? That is, if I only have one
program
>open, will XP Home only use a certain amout of RAM, or
>would it use all of it if I had, say, 1gb?

This gets into a thorny subject. Each application can
access 4 GB of "virtual memory". The application itself
can use 2 GB of that 4 GB space, and the remaining 2 GB
is used by parts of the OS and drivers.

If you had only one process (which is never the case, but
this is simplified), that process could theoretically
have the OS give it 2 GB of physical RAM, and the OS
would use the remaining 2 GB to help service things
(assuming the machine had 4 GB of RAM total).

With under 4 GB of RAM total, or multiple processes all
wanting RAM, the OS starts swapping some of that 2 GB
possible virtual memory out to the disk and back to RAM,
depending on the situation.

>Follow-up question: Is there any advantages to upgrading
>to XP Pro if I had 1gb RAM?

No, the core of the OS is the same between XP Home and
Pro, and they each handle memory management identically.
The only reason to upgrade to XP Pro is if you needed any
of the XP Pro specific features (Remote Desktop host,
domain member ability, IIS, etc).



>.
>

[Mike Smith]

Thanks for the detailed answer David. I followed most of
what you said but I'm still a little fuzzy on how much RAM
a typical program (such as MS Word or Warcraft) would use.

Bottom line: upgrading my RAM from 512k to 1gb will
improve performance of my XP Home machine, especially in
demanding situations, correct?

[David Jones]

Unfortunately, there's no hard and fast answer, the
amount of RAM a program uses is dependant on the program
itself.

In general in very demanding situations, upgrading from
512 MB to 1 GB will produce a performance increase, yes.
If you don't run lots of things at once, you may not see
that noticable an increase.

>-----Original Message-----
>Thanks for the detailed answer David. I followed most of
>what you said but I'm still a little fuzzy on how much
RAM
>a typical program (such as MS Word or Warcraft) would
use.
>
>Bottom line: upgrading my RAM from 512k to 1gb will
>improve performance of my XP Home machine, especially in
>demanding situations, correct?
>.
>

[LVTravel]

Mike, David did give very good answers to your questions.

Good job David.

"David Jones" > wrote in message
...
> Unfortunately, there's no hard and fast answer, the
> amount of RAM a program uses is dependant on the program
> itself.
>
> In general in very demanding situations, upgrading from
> 512 MB to 1 GB will produce a performance increase, yes.
> If you don't run lots of things at once, you may not see
> that noticable an increase.
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >Thanks for the detailed answer David. I followed most of
> >what you said but I'm still a little fuzzy on how much
> RAM
> >a typical program (such as MS Word or Warcraft) would
> use.
> >
> >Bottom line: upgrading my RAM from 512k to 1gb will
> >improve performance of my XP Home machine, especially in
> >demanding situations, correct?
> >.
> >

[NoNoBadDog!]

Check your friends eyes...if they are brown then that confirms that he is
full of sh*t; If they are not brown it is because he is now a quart low
after the huge load he just gave you. windows can use up to 4GB of RAM; but
your mobo probably only supports 2GB or less.

Bobby

"Mike Smith" > wrote in message
...
> Quick question: I was going to upgrade my RAM from 512k to
> 1gb on my XP Home machine and a friend claims that
> anything more than 256kRAM is a waste because XP Home can
> only use 256kRAM. He says I'll have to upgrade to XP Pro
> to use any more RAM. Is that true?
>
> Thanks...

[PCyr]

PMSL - I may have to steal that. ;-)

--
Check out http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com for amazing tweaks and fixes

Member of "Newsgroups are for everyone" (Perdita X. Twitt is a
self-appointed, self-righteous, ruthless, bitchy net-cop too!)

Email address is fake to prevent SPAM.
Real email address is pcyr2000 AT hotmail DOT com
Change the obvious to the obvious.
------------------
"NoNoBadDog!" > wrote in message
...
> Check your friends eyes...if they are brown then that confirms that he is
> full of sh*t; If they are not brown it is because he is now a quart low
> after the huge load he just gave you. windows can use up to 4GB of RAM;
but
> your mobo probably only supports 2GB or less.
>
> Bobby
>
> "Mike Smith" > wrote in message
> ...
> > Quick question: I was going to upgrade my RAM from 512k to
> > 1gb on my XP Home machine and a friend claims that
> > anything more than 256kRAM is a waste because XP Home can
> > only use 256kRAM. He says I'll have to upgrade to XP Pro
> > to use any more RAM. Is that true?
> >
> > Thanks...
>
>

[PCyr]

Please note: You mean 512 *M*B not 512 KB.

--
Check out http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com for amazing tweaks and fixes

Member of "Newsgroups are for everyone" (Perdita X. Twitt is a
self-appointed, self-righteous, ruthless, bitchy net-cop too!)

Email address is fake to prevent SPAM.
Real email address is pcyr2000 AT hotmail DOT com
Change the obvious to the obvious.
------------------
"Mike Smith" > wrote in message
...
> Thanks for the detailed answer David. I followed most of
> what you said but I'm still a little fuzzy on how much RAM
> a typical program (such as MS Word or Warcraft) would use.
>
> Bottom line: upgrading my RAM from 512k to 1gb will
> improve performance of my XP Home machine, especially in
> demanding situations, correct?

[Alex Nichol]

Mike Smith wrote:

>Quick question: I was going to upgrade my RAM from 512k to=20
>1gb on my XP Home machine and a friend claims that=20
>anything more than 256kRAM is a waste because XP Home can=20
>only use 256kRAM. He says I'll have to upgrade to XP Pro=20
>to use any more RAM. Is that true?

No it is not. The limitations of Home and Pro are identical in this
area. But that is not to say that the upgrade will do you any good.
That depends on the workload you impose on it, of *active* programs.
Read up at www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm and try the tool linked to find
how much page file you are actually using when you don't load things and
leave them parked in case they may be wanted. Unless there is
significant use (not just 20MB or so) adding RAM will do you no good


--=20
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K.